Mechanical seals are used to provide a seal around a rotating shaft. For example, mechanical seals may be used for providing a fluid-tight seal between a rotating shaft and a stationary structure. For proper operation, rotatable seal components are typically secured to the shaft and stationary seal components are typically secured to the structure. The relative location of the rotatable and stationary components within the mechanical seal is important in order to allow for the proper operation of the mechanical seal components. Radially locating the mechanical seal components in this manner is typically known as “centering” the stationary components around the shaft, thereby locating the stationary components relative to the rotating components of the mechanical seal. It is understood that “centering” is not limited to precisely locating the seal components to be centered with respect to the shaft, the structure or other seal components. Axially locating the mechanical seal components along the axis of the shaft may be described as “axially spacing” or “setting” the rotatable components along the shaft. Centering and axial spacing are often performed by the use of centering or setting clips that are mounted to a portion of the mechanical seal (rotatable or stationary) and are manually set to contact the other portion (respectively stationary or rotatable) of the mechanical seal, when the shaft is at rest, thereby positioning the rotatable components relative to the stationary components of the mechanical seal. In order to allow for rotation of the shaft, the centering or setting clips are manually removed.
Some conventional approaches to minimize the labor required to remove the clips involve forming the clips of a wearable material that can be left in place during rotation of the shaft. One such example of spacing clips can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,913,520. However, wearable material clips that are left in place may introduce wear on the shaft or its associated hardware and cause heat generation issues that may be undesirable. Seal component positioning accuracy may be enhanced by the use of a hard material because the hard material inhibits variations in the spacing clip dimensions.